"I didn't really want to move [Lee]," Amaro said. "But I really felt that this is the best way to go about getting to the goal."
After three wild days, Amaro finally explained his thinking on the great Cy Young Swap of '09. What emerged was a coherent picture of both the logic behind the trades and the enormous risk Amaro was willing to take.
"Is it going to be the right decision?" Amaro said. "That remains to be seen. I do not know that. Is it risky? Yes, because we're moving a lot of talent out of our system. But I don't mind taking a risk on a guy that I feel is one of the best pitchers in baseball."
It all starts there. Lee is a terrific pitcher, a Cy Young Award winner who delivered at the highest level in the playoffs and World Series. But Halladay has been a more dominant pitcher, with more overpowering and varied stuff, for significantly longer - even though he's just a year older than Lee.
The decision to add Halladay was easy. The trouble was that the deal with Toronto further gutted a farm system that had already been raided to acquire Lee in July, not to mention the Joe Blanton deal in 2008.
"We could not leave the cupboard bare," Amaro said.
So Amaro sought an accompanying deal that would bring in some legitimate prospects to offset the talent drain. When he looked at his team, there weren't many players he could dangle as bait. Blanton wasn't going to do it. J.A. Happ wasn't going to do it. Amaro certainly didn't want to mess with the lineup that has carried this team.
Cole Hamels surely would have brought the kind of talent Amaro was looking for, but that's only because the rest of baseball believes what the Phillies do - that the 25-year-old lefthander is going to be an elite pitcher for years to come.
